Blind Jump
by Mxthomas
Summary: What happens when you mix pant less, magic-wielding girls, laser shooting aliens, an other-worldly military, a Search and Rescue crew from that military, and a deranged, power hungry general all into one basket? A clusterfuck of epic proportions.
1. Chapter 1

_**AN: So, here we are. Yes this is a re-write. And yes, I'm going to write this copletely through. Party Time.**_

"I'm tellin' ya man! That shit is gonna kills us!" An over-dramatic voice said loudly from my right. A voice I had gotten used to during my brief time here. The voice was energetic and emphasized with frantic hand gestures that really looked like he was on an extreme dose of LSD and was trying to swat down the imaginary miniature dragons that were swarming him. I continued my stroll with my rather energetic companion following me. I eventually set my blue eyes on his own green ones.

"Dude, calm down. It's fine. The guys at EastPoint got a nice long look at it, it's not going to blow up, it's not going to atomize us, and it's certainly not going to start an XK-class event." I said, making sure to due the typical smartass motion of counting off all of his ridiculous theories on my fingers. He seemed to have gotten the message and dropped his case by averting his gaze to the nearby window.

"But seriously, who's gonna test it out?" He asked, genuine curiosity in his voice. I gave a small shrug as I slowed my pace.

"I don't know. Probably those spooks that got here a few days ago. Why else would they be here?" I replied, stating only what I considered obvious. Some agents had arrived out-of-no-where and had started asking questions to all the superior officers, a rather normal occurence actually, though the usual questions were about how new weapons and other tech were functioning. And from what I could gather, that wasn't what they were asking about.

They were asking about our training.

I use the word 'our' broadly as there are more than two recruits out here. We're in some of the less active and more desolate parts of the universe commonly, and occaisonaly we'd jump to a city or frieghter route to re-fuel and re-supply. And a station this big can house thousands upon thousands of occupants, all of them being military personel. The station itself was a giant Drydock meant to house any class of ship imaginable along with it's own massive crew. Upon reaching an elevator that led to the actual hangar deck, I turned back to my fiend.

"I'm heading down. See you later." I said with a casual wave. My friend returned the wave.

"See ya." He said, his tone being a bit more positive than my own. He continued his stroll to the flight lounge to do god-knows-what. Upon arriving in the hangar I immediatly looked to my left, being cautious of the faulty rail that tended to retract than immediatly snap back forward, slapping the poor victim in the gut or...other places. As it turned out, the rail had been repaired and I had nothing to worry about. I took a brief moment to admire the luxorius hangar. Rebel&York were very good at their jobs from what I could see. I actually dont know why the old man had gotten the place remodeled, it was fine like it was before. But I suppose he was getting sick of bland military design that we had in the old hangar, while Rebel&York had a more comfortable approach to interiors. I shrugged to myself as I dropped the topic in my mind and continued my walk. Only to be interrupted by some psycho in a Greycat buggie.

"WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" The driver shouted as he burned a trail in front of me before smashing headlong into a stack of empty crates. I just faepalmed. Yep, it's a Tuesday.

After that rather odd encounter I continued walking down the rows of various space craft, everything from and Idris-M to a M50 could be found in here. The larger craft were either in the larger parts of the station or in the seperate docking rings outside. Speaking of which, I remember a report saying that the 9th fleet would be docking soon. Caufman is gonna flip shit.

Speaking of my energetic firend, I soon found him gawking at one of the ships parked in the hangar bay. And I couldn't really blame him, seeing what the ship was.

Painted a bright white with a dark black nose, the ship could be easily distinguished from it's other variants. The ship was the Constellation Phoenix. A luxury touring vessel with a rather high price tag and a name to uphold. It's relatively un-armed except for the PD fighter kept in the cargo bay. Which wasn't really much of a cargo bay as the fighter is all it could hold, well, that and the Greycat buggie. I looked over to Caufman.

"Yeah, in your dreams." I said with a smirk. He turned to me and gave me a deadpan stare in response.

"You just love to kill my hope don't you?" He said while narrowing his eyes. I grinned and nodded.

"How else would I maintain my sanity?" I asked sarcastically. Caufman just groaned and rolled his eyes before his shoulders slumped in defeat. He finally turned back around.

"Oh, I think the old man wanted to talk to you." He said casually. I ripped a page out of his book and used a deadpan stare of my own.

"You could have told me that when I first walked over here. Wait, how'd you get down here so fast?" I asked in sudden realization. He shrugged with a face that said 'I don't remember'. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the elevator, I was planning to spend time with the other members of my crew but it looks like that will have to wait.

"I guess I'll go see what he wants." I said with a wave as I walked toward the elevator convineiantly located to my left. Caufman gave no audible reply but I assume that he had waved or gave a gesture along those lines.

I walked into the elevator and pressed 4. The Briefing rooom was on the 4th floor, so I assumed that's where he wanted to meet me. I reached the door to the room, slowly placed my hand on the handle, and froze. I was trying to think up why he would want to speak with me and then I remembered how he didn't like to be kept waiting. I pulled the handle down and pushed the door open to be met with a rather...interesting sight.

The chairs around the room were all full except for one which I assumed was the one I was to be seated in. I could recall seeing some of these people around the station, others were a mystery to me. I eventually heard an old, hearty voice speak up from the front of the table.

"Ah! Thomas! Ther you are, please, have a seat." He said, his smile was practically audible in his voice. The man was Fleet Admiral Andrew Cromwell. His age was distinguishable by his grey hair and dark eyes. Cromwell was actually quite friendly and had a fatherly attitude toward the entire crew, but those who caused problems...well..they tended not to last long here. Cromwell's voice eventually brought me from my thoughts.

"Now that we're all in attendence, we have a request of all of you." He said, his voice suddenly becoming far more serious than it was a few moments ago. I could practically _feel_ some of the other people here tense up at his words. Upon looking behind Cromwell, I noticed a faint outline of someone standing in the shadows behind him. He turned to the outline.

"Commander McClaren, you have our attention." He said to the outline. Said outline stepped forward and took a very millitaristic stance. It turned out to be a middle age woman with shoulder length curly brown hair, a tan complexion, and the look of a survivor on her face. She spoke with a slight southern accnt.

"Alright, now that your eyes are up here, listen up! In the hangar is a single Herald-class info runner fuled up and ready for departure. Unfortunately, the UER demands that it gets a full military capital escort. That's why your here." She said firmly.

My eyebrow quirked up. What? A full escort force? For one Herald? That made absolutlely zero sense. That intel must be pretty damn important. A full escort force consisted of two Idris-class frigates, four Retalliator-class heavy bombers, ten F7A Hornets, and twenty Gladiator-class fighters. But that raised a red flag in my mind.

"Question." I said from my place at the table. The woman turned her head to me and looked me over briefly before speaking.

"Yeah?" She asked in a tone that suggested that my question was wating her time. I was slightly annoyed at that but brushed it off upon remembering that Cromwell was in the room. Acting like a smart-ass around him was pretty much a death sentence.

"Why am I here? I pilot a Search and Rescue craft and that has no place in an escort force." I said. It was true, I piloted a Cutlass Red which was basically a mobile field ambulance. An escort force, even of that size, had no use for a medical craft. She gave a slight glare in my direction.

"Minimal risk will be taken with this mission. If we lose that data, then the council won't be happy about it. And last I checked, a Cutlass of that model carries a fairly large internal computer core." She said, adding a cheeky smirk at the end. I sighed.

It was true, the Cutlass Red had a computer core larger than a Constellation. It was mostly used to help encrypt the signal of it's scanner array to help avoid detection. I suppose that she had a point but my ships talent would be mostly waisted performing that role as it made no use of it's advanced medical facilities. McClure's voice snapped me back to attention once more.

"The information that Herald is carrying is pivital to the war effort. We will not lose that ship or it's data. Are we clear?" She said, to which she recieved various hums, nods, and 'Yes ma'am's

I on the other hand simply stood up, did a sarcastic bow that she didn't seem to notice, and left.

_**AN: A re-write out of me is like witnessing the second coming of christ. I plan on writing longer chapters in the next installments so keep an eye out. And also, there were two references in this chapter. Both being from well known video games. Both are horror and one ame out very recently. R&R and I hope you enjoyed!**_


	2. Iron Hill

_**AN: And we're back! Round two! And if you couldn't guess, the references were to Dead Space 3 and the Alien franchise. R&R and I hope you enjoy!**_

I walked out of the briefing room and down the hall to the nearest elevator as I processed the information I just received from the briefing. If it was a minimal risk mission and there were going to be no planetary landings, then the docking collar needed to be up and running within the next two hours. The collar had snapped during a rescue operation aboard the UEN_ Maelstorm_, a Paragon-class Dreadnought that had been boarded by insurrectionists. I told James that we shouldn't 'Just Go' but he didn't listen. I eventually reached the hangar, called it to my floor, and stepped in once it arrived. Then a thought occurred to me.

_'Wasn't the collar supposed to be fixed already?'_ I remembered as the elevator slowed to a stop on the hangar floor, floor 1A to be exact.

I stepped back into the familiar commotion of the hangar, at one point I tilted my head up to see an Idris-P with a light escort of Hornets taking off to do the daily patrol. I sighed to myself. I envied them, as a Search and Rescue team, we rarely get called into action. But they got to go off and actually do something every day. I shook my head slightly and focused on actually getting to my own craft. Which, actually, didn't take very long considering that most of the crews were preparing for take off.

Which we would be too.

You heard me right, the mission kicks off in two hours and we may not even have a docking collar. If that thing isn't ready by the time we leave then we may as well be a distraction to hostile fighters. A target, in case you didn't take my meaning. It's not to say that we couldn't fight back, we had a 30mm automatic rail gun mounted below the nose and two Hydra missile pods that could make an Idris feel some pain if it had lost it's shields. But if we ran into a Vanduul swarm? Nope. Game over. We couldn't possibly defend against that.

"Yo!" I heard a shout from a nearby stack of crates, and, judging by the voice, I knew it was addressed towards me.

"Really dude? Really?" I asked flatly toward the talking boxes, to which it took offence.

"DUDE? WHO IS THIS DUDE? I AM THE ALMIGHTY BOX OVERLORD! FEAR ME!" The boxes boomed, to which I simply facepalmed and shook my head.

"C'mon, we're leaving in two hours." I said flatly, to which the box overlord jumped out from behind the crates and looked me over.

"Really? So soon?" He asked, somewhat shocked at the revelation. I nodded.

"Yeah, the old man wants it done and apparently the council does to. Let's go." I said plainly, jerking my head toward the craft. Upon reaching it we did pre-flight checks, ran over the manifest and various other things that needed to be done.

We only had an hour to go now, noted by my watch and the various other ships slowly coming off the deck.

About an hour had passed an we still were sitting there. The two Idris-class frigates had left, along with the fighter group and the Retalliators. All that were left were us and the Redeemer.

"I don't get this shit. Why aren't we leaving yet?" Came the voice of the almighty box overlord. I sighed as i looked back to him, the square glass HUD piece scanning him.

"I have no idea James, but could you stop talking so loud? You're giving me a headache." I said flatly as I turned back around to face the cockpit window. Only for the door that lead to the piloting station to open.

"Hey guys, could you..err..keep it down a bit?" A sweet voice said from behind us. I gave a thumbs up while James turned around.

"Sure Yuuki, sorry bout' that." He said. I could hear the person turn around and leave before the door shut and james leaned down to my chair.

"No wonder so many guys are on her case. Jeez she's hot.." He whispered, though I knew he wouldn't try anything. Matt and I would kill him if he did.

"Calm down bro, don't wanna let Matt here that." I said with a snicker. A few seconds later the Comm feed crackled to life.

_"All call signs remaining associated with Operation: 'Iron Hill' you are clear for launch. I repeat, all call signs associated with Operation: 'Iron Hill' are cleared for launch." _The operations commander called out through the channel. I kicked on the VTOL thrusters and prepped the main engines.

"Let's rock ladies and gentlemen. We are go." I said through my headset, James flicked on the countermeasures, ensured that they worked, and flipped them back off while I did the same with the weapons. I held up my gloved fist which James promptly bumped with his own.

"Let's hit it." He said as I elevated the ship and kicked on the main engines, shooting us quickly out of the hangar. James flicked on his headset.

"_All call signs, this is Med-1, we are clear. Going into a holding pattern."_ He said as I maneuvered us into the thicket of fighter coverage. Most of them were Gladius-model fighters, a primitive yet extremely effective design. The other escorts comprised of various other fighters, mostly F7-A's. I stood up.

"Lock in on that shock vector, follow them out." I ordered to which he gave a mock salute and nodded. Satisfied with the response,I walked into the med-bay, where our security officer and full-time Medical Technician were sitting.

"You guys good back here?" I asked pointing to each of them. Yuuki gave a sweet smile and nodded while Matt, our security specialist, tilted his head up.

"Let me know if any Vanduul get to close. I'll dropkick em' so hard, it'll feel like they kissed a bullet train!" He shouted with a cocky grin, punching at the air.

"Alright, Matt, I'll be sure to leave the door unlcoked. We'll keep you guys updated." I said as I walked over to a small coffee machine, made two cups and walked back into the cockpit. I handed one to James as I sat down and flicked my HUD back on. The shock-drive hummed quietly as it prepped to launch us out to deep space, or as close to Earth as it could get us.

_Meanwhile..._

"What do you mean 'They're walking into a trap?!'" Admiral Cromwell shouted to the Recon squadron leader. The pilot simply bowed his head grimly.

"Exactly what I said, there was a whole mess of Vanduul fighters on an intercept course to them." He said, setting a Holo-Projector down on the table. The Hologram depicted a void with a broken blue line heading in a direct course to earth, while a broken red line approached from the left side. A small timer on the top left of the display read 'TTC 5-12-23-16' With the last number counting down rapidly. Cromwell sighed and pinched the ridge of his nose.

"Can we call them back in time?" He asked, desperately looking for a solution to save his pilots and crew members. The Recon pilot shook his head.

"No. By the time they make the correction and jump back the Vanduul would be all over them. We can only hope that they manage to outrun them." The pilot said before collecting the projector and walking out of the room. A few moments later, commander Ripley emerged from the shadows.

"Sir. That intel could be a major tipping point in this war. If we lose it" She began, but was cut off when Cromwell raised his right hand.

"I don't care about that intel, I don't care about the Vanduul, and I sure as hell don't care about the council!" He said, rising up from his seat and looking down to her. He was extremely intimidating when he wanted to be. Ripley sighed and shook her head.

"Regardless. We need that intel and your pilots intact. Any ideas?" She asked. Cromwell turned and paced for a moment before turning back to her.

"They need reinforcements. Round up two cruisers and their crews, get their captains in here and briefed. We have five minutes before all hell breaks loose on them, and I'll be damned if I don't get them out of there."

_Meanwhile..._

"I still don't feel good about this. Too damn quiet if ya ask me." James said quietly, a rare occurence, from his seat behind me. I shook my head.

"No. That's a good thing. Quiet is our friend." I said, taking a few quick glances out the windows around me. I pulled up the Comm channel for the local task force as two Gladius fighters streaked across the airless void in front of me.

_"This is Med-1 to all local call signs, we got any noise out there?" _I said through the dead silent signal. After a few moments another member of our force replied.

_"Med-1, this is Ranger-7 signaling affirmative. I just picked up multiple high-speed contacts on an intercept course with us."_ The other pilot replied. Upon hearing that, the channel broke into chaos, desperately trying to find out just what was coming for them. The fighters moved into a defensive screening formation while the Herald hid in the midst of the Idris and Retalliator class vessels. We tucked in next to it, ready to respond to a pirate attack and provide aid where needed.

_"All call signs, this is Imperial-1. Sensors just detected multiple Vanduul Scythe-class signatures inbound. Two kilometers and closing. All call signs go to combat readiness level Alpha. I repeat. All call signs go to combat readiness level Alpha. Prepare for contact!"_ Another ship sounded off. I swore under my breath as I heated up the guns, and armed the missile rack. James powered up the shields and prepped the maneuvering thrusters.

"We are so fucked!" James shouted behind me. I shook my head, reaching my hand back and slapping him with it.

"Calm down! Just let the fighters handle them and stay close to the Idris." I said, prepping the EWCD Defense system in case one got to close to us. I saw the Herald deploy it's only weapon, a Swarm-class missile pod, capable of knocking out multiple targets in one fell swoop.

I turned my head to the other window, watching as four Vanduul fighters arrived ahead of their brethren and were cut down by the thick defense screen of fighters and guns. They didn't seem like much of a threat...

Until the rest showed up.


End file.
